How Secure Is Playing Word Puzzle Games On Mobile Phones

Just when you thought the market for mobile apps couldn’t
get any bigger, smartphone changed the gaming landscape once again! Research
shows one of the first things new smartphone owners do is install a mobile game
app. In fact, more game apps get installed than any other type of app.

Word Puzzle Games

We’ve all played them and they are an enduring popular type
of game, which has withstood the fads and fashions of mobile gaming. According
to one survey in July 2016, 35,500,000 puzzle games were downloaded in that
month alone. A further 4,300,000 word games were also downloaded that July. So
the word puzzle segment is substantial and the chances are you have one on your
own smartphone.

Data Confers – Strategic Advantage

Finding an edge in this crowded, jostling environment
involves gaining access to competitive advantage. Mobile game statistics help
game developers sift through the gaming segments to identify growth
opportunities. These statistics also act as benchmarks to evaluate the likely
performance of new game concepts based on past indicators.

The question is where does this veritable torrent of data
come from? The answer it turns out is the data comes from you!

Your Smartphone Is Not Your Friend

No matter how attached you are to your phone, it betrays you
in a hundred little ways. Silently, your phone sends back a continual stream to
data on your word puzzle game history to the game’s developer, merging into a
rush of Big Data. Yet inside that data stream, there is an identifiable unique
fingerprint liked to your device.

Harmless enough you might say. However, research indicates sensors
in your phone designed to collect seemingly harmless data can leave you exposed
to a cyber breach with the resultant theft of all your personal data (delete
those photos now!). Simply denying an app access to your location is not enough
to prevent your phone being tracked.

So Many Sensory Talking To the Cloud

Accelerometers in your smartphone are used to sense if you
rotated your screen perfect for a wide range of applications from pedometers to
word puzzle games. These accelerometers leave behind a “unique, traceable
fingerprint” that can be used to identify you and monitor your phone. During
the manufacturing phase, minuscule imperfections create a unique fingerprint on
your accelerometer data. As that data bounces to the cloud for processing, your
smartphone’s individual signal can identify you, betraying your location.

Other sensors may be every bit as culpable on the data
front, cameras, microphones, and gyroscopes could be leaving their telltale
prints in the cloud. Even if your accelerometer lacked a completely unique
fingerprint, given the millions of mobile devices in service, by combining it with
other sensors like your smartphone’s gyroscope, it may still be possible to
trace an individual device location and activity.

Final Word

In a complex technology environment, where the Internet is
an all-pervasive presence complete security is an illusion. In themselves, the
games appear harmless, however, never forget those same games are sending a
never-ending stream of data back to base. If that isn’t enough, your own
smartphone very sophisticated features themselves, leave behind an all-too
traceable fingerprint.